The Maserati 250F was the perfect racing machine in 1954 and still is

Juan Manuel Fangio in his Maserati 250F on the approach to Tabac corner in the 1957 Monaco Grand Prix. Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

The first of this season's Formula One cars breaks cover next weekend when the McLaren team launch their new car online, to be followed 24 hours later by a similar unveiling on the Scuderia Ferrari's official website. Only then will the sport's fans know whether their greatest fear – of a grid full of misshapen monsters – is about to be realised.

Designed around a new set of technical rules, the 2014 cars will use 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged engines boosted by energy recycled from their exhaust and braking systems. In a bid to reduce the effect of aerodynamics, their front wings will be smaller and no one will be able to redirect exhaust gases through or under the bodywork, a restriction specifically designed to cut the advantage enjoyed by Adrian Newey, the genius behind Sebastian Vettel's all-conquering Red Bull.

So far, so rational. Beyond a certain point, aerodynamics are for planes and missiles, not cars, and anything aimed at restoring the original function of racing as a testbed for ordinary motoring is to be welcomed. The new rules may speed up the development of battery technology for hybrid motors, which would be beneficial to you, me and the planet. Other new design parameters, however, could accelerate the recent trend towards sheer ugliness.

Once racing cars were prized for their aesthetic purity, and this weekend it is exactly 60 years since the most beautiful grand prix machine of all time made its debut. The Maserati 250F was rolled out in Buenos Aires, where Juan Manuel Fangio, the national hero, took the wheel to win his home grand prix, the opening round of the 1954 world championship. A legend was up and running.

The 250F looked like every postwar schoolboy's idea of the perfect racing machine – a low snout, a long bonnet, a shapely tail and a bright red paint-job – but its charisma turned out to be timeless. Two dozen of them survive today, some in museums, others still being raced. Even the humblest example would set you back not less than a million and a half quid. For the very best, you might need four or five times that amount.

But the knowledge of its monetary value was not uppermost in my thoughts as I wedged myself into the seat of a 250F this week, silently parked in the hanger of a former Royal Flying Corps aerodrome somewhere in England. The overriding sensation was a sense of history. The car in question was never driven by Fangio, but it had been fashioned by the same hands and it has done its share of racing.

The view from the cockpit is the same as the great Argentinian enjoyed while winning the most memorable victory of his career, coming from behind to beat the Ferraris of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins at the daunting old Nürburgring circuit in 1957: the wood-rimmed steering wheel, the big rev counter, the gear lever beside the right kneecap, the wraparound perspex screen, the transmission tunnel running between the driver's legs, the skinny tyres on shining wire wheels, and the lack of even the most rudimentary form of driver protection – no belts, no roll bar. Just an upright seat-back and a thin layer of aluminium separate the driver from a tank containing, in Fangio's heyday, 200 litres of a highly inflammable mixture of methanol and petrol.

Manufactured for private customers as well as the official team, these cars distinguished themselves by taking part in the first race of the 2.5-litre formula in 1954 and the last in 1960, across a span of seven seasons. Gentlemen amateurs found the 250F a relatively simple and forgiving machine that could be used not just in full grands prix but in the many non-championship Formula One races that were held around Europe in the 1950s, from Goodwood to the streets of Bordeaux and Naples. And not just gentlemen: it was with a 250F that, in 1958, Maria Teresa de Filippis became the first woman to compete in the world championship.

For virtuosos such as Fangio and Stirling Moss, the 250F was the equivalent of a Stradivarius, an instrument on which they could display their virtuosity. Its fine balance enabled them to employ a technique of high-speed cornering that involved breaking the traction on all four wheels and using the throttle input to determine the angle of travel, something as satisfying to accomplish as it was spectacular to watch. "If you can drive sideways, you can drive a 250F," the English driver Willie Green, a historic racing specialist, says in a new 250F Owners' Workshop Manual, written by Ian Wagstaff and published this month by Haynes – the third hardback book to be devoted to the model, and destined to be bought by many who can only dream of owning such a machine.

At a time when motor racing was at its most lethal, only one man was ever killed in a 250F. The promising Argentinian driver Onofre Marimón, a protégé of Fangio, made a mistake and left the track at the Nürburgring during practice for the 1954 German Grand Prix, slicing through a hedge and plunging down a hillside. As was the way in those days, the car was taken back to the factory for repairs before being pressed back into service.

With no eye on posterity, Maserati regularly swapped frames and engines and changed chassis numbers, leading to a great amount of detective work, and a small industry in authentication, when the cars started to acquire their present value. Most of the surviving 250Fs have benefited from new frames, new body parts, new suspension, steering and brakes, and other parts built to replace those worn out by time and use.

The car I sat in belongs to Nick Mason, the drummer with Pink Floyd, a serious enthusiast and experienced driver who has owned it for 30 years. It uses a replacement engine, built by an expert; the original unit is carefully preserved in storage, along with the corroded remnants of its original steel-frame tubing and other bits and pieces.

When it became clear that Maserati had not made enough 250Fs to satisfy the later demand from collectors and historic racers, a trade in exact replicas – some of them incorporating original spare parts – sprang up. The best of those fakes, with no authentic history, would now set you back the better part of a million. One day, perhaps, someone will be turning out replicas of whichever 2014 car makes its way into the history books. But it is unlikely to be half as pretty as the machine that Fangio first fired up six decades ago.

About this article

The Maserati 250F was the perfect racing machine in 1954 and still is | Richard Williams

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 17.25 EST on Friday 17 January 2014.
A version appeared on p9 of the Sport section of the Guardian
on Friday 17 January 2014.
It was last modified at 00.10 EDT on Tuesday 3 June 2014.
It was first published at 17.00 EST on Friday 17 January 2014.